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This is a commentary on Breaking Bad; see the full list of commentaries here. Please be warned that the show gets pretty intense and the commentaries may include strong language and references to violence, sexuality and drug use.

S01E01: Pilot

I did not know much about this show when I first watched it with my husband in the summer of 2013. (That means we watched it late in the gap between the first and second halves of season five - when we’d finished our binging, “Blood Money” was maybe a week away.) It was supposedly good, apparently there was discourse about whether some guy was a bad guy and exactly when he’d become a bad guy, and I was really confused by the title. I wasn’t super-interested in it; I’m pretty sure my husband just downloaded it at random to have a new show to watch.

However, it didn’t take long for it to hook me in, because the opening of the pilot episode is magnificent. Pants flying through the air, middle-aged man in his underwear frantically driving an RV on a desert road, unconscious guy in a gas mask in the passenger seat, what seems to be two dead bodies sliding around in the back alongside breaking glassware, sirens blaring as he crashes the car - if you ever saw an in media res opening and wanted to know how on earth we got there, it’s this one. The combination of enticing intensity and mystery with the bits that are just utterly baffling is perfect.

The precise moment when I was really sold on this show was when Walt stumbled out of the crashed RV, just freaking out. This wasn’t some stone-cold criminal badass; this was a terrified half-naked guy, helplessly out of his depth and with no idea how to deal with any of this. (I like that sort of thing.) Then he made a cryptic but heartfelt video to his family and walked out to stand in the middle of the road, still pantsless, raising a gun towards the approaching sirens as if preparing for some kind of hopeless, suicidal last stand against the police and anyone who would stand against him. What had driven him to this point? What had happened? Why was he in his underwear? I wanted to know, and I was pretty sure the answers were going to be delightful.

…And I thought that was the entire show. Like, I assumed the opening was a teaser for the series finale. Maybe the first season finale, at the earliest. It was actually from later in this very episode. One of the first things that really struck me about Breaking Bad was just how much stuff somehow managed to happen per episode - somehow this show was setting up A’s and B’s that couldn’t seem further apart and then still believably getting us there in the space of less than an hour. (In hindsight, I was probably too used to episodic shows, where there isn’t a lot of plot development in each episode.)

On my first time through, the cold open made me expect to really like Walt - this very ordinary-seeming man who’s somehow landed himself in a terrifying situation he has no idea how to handle. But on a rewatch there are already telling signs here of who Walt is at his core and who he will become. When he’s filming the video to his family and starts to get choked up, he blocks the camera, mortified at the thought of actually crying on video even as he’s trying to tell his family he loves them for possibly the last time - he cannot show true vulnerability.

And - right now, in this situation, having (he assumes) killed two people - Walt is fully intending to fight. He could give himself up to the police and confess honestly - but he refuses to do that. This is not an admission of guilt. The video sounds like a suicide note - but he didn’t make it because he was going to turn the gun on himself. Here, in this rush of adrenaline, he’s planning to go out in a blaze, taking with him anyone he can. For just this moment, he feels as if he’s living out this heroic macho fantasy, and dying a criminal badass in a blaze of glory seems actually kind of enticing - certainly better than dying of lung cancer. And in that moment, as his heart pounds, even though he just made that video for his family - it doesn’t matter so much to him how much pain that would inevitably cause them. He’ll finally be someone, even if that someone is a meth-cooking murderer. And really that sums up Walt’s entire character right there.

Three weeks earlier

After the intro, though, we flash back to how this all began, and we get a look at who Walt was before all this. Perhaps my favorite part of this is the silent shot of an award hanging on his wall, establishing that he contributed to Nobel Prize-winning research… in 1985. Walt never utters a word about how he feels about his life, but as the episode unfolds with his daily life we see how this man who clearly did some brilliant stuff when he was younger is stuck in a dull, uninteresting existence, trying to teach his subject to kids who don’t care in between polishing their cars at his second job. He’s just vaguely uncomfortable at his surprise birthday party, smiling politely as his macho cop brother-in-law chuckles at the very idea of him holding a gun. His son thinks Hank is so much cooler than him, and Hank sits there boasting about taking down meth labs, and Walt just stands there, faintly boggling at the money involved. He’s numb. You can feel a hint of disappointment and bitterness and humiliation, but they’re dulled with time - he’s more or less resigned himself to the idea that this is all there is for him.

In these early scenes, pre-cancer diagnosis, Walt’s meek, quiet and unassuming. At the breakfast table on his fiftieth birthday, Skyler’s trying to talk a spine into him - his boss has been making him work late, and Walt’s been silently putting up with it. (This will go on to be convenient for the meth-cooking, but I enjoy a lot how it also serves the purpose of illustrating something about his character - practically everything in Breaking Bad serves multiple purposes, tying the narrative together.) Hank makes jabs at his manhood at the birthday party, and he stands by and takes it. And I was amused and delighted on this rewatch to realize that we learn right here at the very beginning about how Walt hasn’t been very motivated to do work around the house - the broken water heater is established in the breakfast conversation, and later, during the World’s Most Awkward Birthday Handjob, Skyler asks him about some painting he was going to do but hasn’t been doing. Seems like innocuous filler talk here, but put a pin in this; it will be coming back.

Another interesting bit, though: Walt Jr. is disabled, and Walt’s used to accommodating him and is broadly a considerate parent to him (as far as my abled self can tell) - but when Walt is driving alone, just after being mocked by some of his students when they saw him washing their car, he makes a point of removing the disability sign from the car window. Which is obviously the proper, reasonable thing to do - but we’re being shown this right here for a reason, and I’m pretty sure it’s because Walt resents the idea someone might assume he’s disabled - just a tiny hint of that bubbling sense of pride lurking underneath, coming out here, when he’s alone.

I’m sure practically everyone has remarked on this, but in Walt’s chemistry class, he introduces it as the study of change, being about growth, decay, then transformation - which is also what the show is about: how Walt changes, grows and decays and transforms. (I’ve got to nitpick, though: right after this he tells the class to turn to chapter six, on ionic bonds. Why is he giving an intro on what chemistry is if they’re already up to chapter six in the textbook and talking about ionic bonds?!)

When Walt’s collapsed at the car wash, in the ambulance, he lengthily insists that he’s fine - that it’s just this bug that’s been going around. Partly this is bound to be out of a practical concern about American medical bills, but there is also definitely an element of Walt’s running insistence that he doesn’t need anyone’s help. He’s self-sufficient; he can provide. He’s fine.

But then, of course, he’s diagnosed with lung cancer.

His first reaction is pretty typical of how his mind works these days - he just kind of numbly zones out and becomes fixated on a mustard stain on the doctor’s shirt instead of the fact he’s just been told he has maybe a couple of years left to live (a great scene). But then it starts to sink in, to erode that layer of dull acceptance that’s been smothering his life for all this time. He snaps at his boss and quits his job; “Fuck you! And your eyebrows!” is literally the first expression of actual emotion that he musters (another great scene). And then, without even telling Skyler about the diagnosis, he sits bitterly by his pool, burning up matches, each lit for a moment and then simply crumbled and gone, wasted. His family is already struggling a bit financially, and him having cancer is not going to help. Hank is always busting meth labs and finding huge sums of money - money that these lowlifes earned from simple chemistry that Walt could do blindfolded. And underlying it all there’s that resentment, the knowledge that he should have been so much more, and now he’s dying without ever accomplishing any of what he’s capable of.

So he makes a decision. He has nothing to lose. He’s just going to cook up some meth and make some money so he can pay for his treatment and leave something to his family before he dies. He can do that. Get a little excitement in his life, even, like Hank suggested when offering to let him come on a ride-along while they busted a meth lab. The cancer gives him a deadline and a purpose, something he hasn’t had for years. Walt is motivated again. And on some level, that’s actually good for him.

Partnering up

So Walt calls up Hank to take him up on the ride-along offer. On the way there, Hank explains that if you mix meth wrong, you get mustard gas. Walt corrects him - phosphine gas - but then adds, “I think”, still compulsively meek even though obviously he knows perfectly well that he’s right on this. Initially, Walt’s there hoping to get to go inside and see what the lab looks like. But spotting one of his former students tumbling half-naked off a roof (what an entrance), clearly one of the meth cooks, he gets an idea in his head. After all, while he knows the chemistry backwards and forwards, he knows nothing about the drug trade and wouldn’t quite have known how to go about selling meth. Here’s this kid who does - and Walt’s got leverage on him.

In hindsight, perhaps the first instance of true darkness in Walt is the fact that he blackmails Jesse into becoming his cooking partner. He doesn’t just propose it; he threatens to turn him in if he doesn’t agree. And make no mistake, this is calculated; Walt says it coolly, obviously having planned this before he came. (He probably wouldn’t have come if he hadn’t had this leverage.) Sure, Jesse’s already involved in the drug trade - Walt’s by no means corrupting an innocent here - and although we don’t see it it doesn’t seem like he put up too much resistance. But it’s pretty clear that Walt considers Jesse beneath him. He’s deeply condescending even in their very first interaction: “I never thought you’d amount to much, but methamphetamine?”. And Walt certainly doesn’t seem to be losing any sleep over the idea of coercing this kid into working with him on this. As far as he’s concerned, Jesse is a lowlife junkie, he’s made his own bed, so using him in this way seems justifiable, maybe even just.

And as a first-time viewer, it’s easy to nod along with this. Yeah, this kid is a random junkie, one who makes meth spiked with chilli powder, calls himself “Cap'n Cook”, has a vanity license plate referencing his meth cook name, should have been caught by the DEA earlier and only wasn’t by a stroke of luck, and might I remind you, was introduced tumbling half-naked off a roof. He feels like the comic relief, the druggie buffoon to Walt’s competent genius - not exactly hugely sympathetic next to the terminal cancer patient that we’ve spent the past half hour getting to know and rooting for, right? So it’s easy to pretty much just cheer for Walt’s cleverness here and not notice the ruthlessness brewing in him, the first time around.

It’s Jesse who suggests getting an RV to cook in - he refuses to do it at his aunt’s house (though he’s not telling Walt about his aunt yet - Walt found in the filing system that the place is owned by his aunt, but Jesse just says “I own it”), and obviously Walt can’t do it at his. Though he reacted to the initial proposal with disbelieving laughter, and is pretty hostile towards Walt and makes a point of reminding him this wasn’t his idea, he seems actually sort of tickled by the idea of actually doing this - it means he has a new partner to replace Emilio, but here, initially, it also probably seems sort of validating that his old condescending chemistry teacher needs his help, and he has something to teach him.

But in bringing Jesse into the fold, Walt also finds an unexpected catharsis. He’s spent so much of his life being meek, and wasting his considerable talent and intellect - but now, working with this naïve kid who has no idea about chemistry, he feels this satisfying sense of superiority in correcting him, berating him for his amateurishness. (Delightful early Walt-Jesse interaction: “Did you learn nothing from my chemistry class?” “No! You flunked me, remember?” “No wonder.” “Prick.”) At least for now, consciously Walt’s probably just experiencing this as frustration with Jesse’s incompetence. But the egotistical satisfaction that Walt gets out of cooking pretty soon becomes the main reason he keeps doing it - and whether he realizes it or not, this is a significant part of why it makes him feel that way.

Jesse tells Walt he knows someone looking to sell an RV for $85,000; Walt hands him less than $7000 and tells him to “negotiate”. (Jesse: “You are not how I remember you from class. I mean, like, not at all.”) Jesse tries to ask why Walt’s doing this, because if he’s gone mad or something, that affects Jesse; Walt cryptically answers “I am awake” and leaves. And… wow. Exactly how is Jesse supposed to just ‘negotiate’ a price down from $85k to $7k? Here we skip past how Jesse actually magically gets this done, but we’re going to learn later that it’s by blowing most of the $7k on strippers and champagne and then pretty much being about to attempt to bolt and leave town when his friend steals the keys to his parents’ RV and sells it to Jesse for what remains of the money. It’s amazing Walt thought this would work, and that he trusted Jesse with his $7k at all, but either way he’s leaving Jesse with the responsibility of somehow negotiating a price down by 92%, alone, under blackmail, with no suggestion of what they might do if he can’t get that done. This is not only alarmingly shortsighted but also just a colossal dick move, Walt.

Immediately following this, still high on the rush of the fact he’s actually doing this and how easily he assumed power over Jesse, already feeling more powerful and in control than he’s probably felt for decades if ever, Walt’s with his family at a clothing store when some kids start mocking Walt Jr., and… Walt stops Skyler from giving them a talking-to and instead physically assaults them. Again, he does it in a calculated, not impulsive, way: he leaves the store out the back and then walks in through the front door, catching them off guard where they’re not looking. He uses macho language to taunt them: “What are you waiting for, your girlfriends?” This is another bit where it’s fairly easy to cheer Walt on watching this for the first time - these kids are obviously assholes, and he probably successfully stops them ever messing with his son again - but it’s also all pretty telling of what’s actually happening in Walt’s head with the whole meth-cooking thing: this sense of power, of masculinity, of finding an outlet for long-bottled-up resentment and aggression.

Jesse

The first time I watched these first episodes, I didn’t like Jesse at all, which is a hilarious thought now, but not exactly unjustified. Walt was complex and intriguing and easy to root for; meanwhile Jesse was there saying Walt can “dress up like a faggot if you want” and calling him “maybe only the world’s second-biggest homo”, which was not exactly endearing. And, well, even aside from that, he just seemed like kind of a buffoon. His interactions with Walt were probably going to be entertaining, but him, as a person, by himself? Nah. I have a distinct memory, hilarious in hindsight, of when Shadey was testing the subtitles he’d downloaded for season two (we were both pretty into this show after the pilot and pumped to binge the whole thing), and he happened to skip to a moment where Jesse was talking about things having happened to him that were very my kind of thing, and I thought “Oh, that sounds fun, but too bad it’s that guy, I don’t care about him.”

But on a rewatch, he does have some good Jesse moments. He thinks of cooking meth as art, which originally just struck me as kind of pretentious and eye-roll-worthy, but considering Jesse is actually an artist, someone who used to love to draw and make stuff with his hands, it’s actually pretty cute that he’d choose to think of this as a kind of art - and of course, his thinking of it that way serves to make him genuinely impressed by Walt’s meth, inspiring him to actually look up to him (everything serves multiple purposes). Later in the episode, Krazy-8 also calls Walt an artist - I wonder if originally Krazy-8 was just Jesse’s dealer, and then one day he started talking about how cooking good meth was an art, and that played a part in how Jesse got interested in getting into it for himself.

My favorite bit of Jesse in the pilot now is when he goes to Krazy-8’s house with the meth that he made with Walt, acting all cool and awesome and like he totally knows what he’s doing and like they’re pals, which it quickly becomes clear they really aren’t - and he’s really freaked out by the aggressive dog, so he tries to make it less scary by asking for the dog’s name… and then goes, “Yeah, I had a dog like that once, except maybe twice as big,” and starts trying to give him dog training advice. Oh my god, Jesse. He’s trying so hard to be the kind of cool tough guy these dudes are and so obviously way out of his depth, and once Emilio’s there, out on bail, and they get threatening, he’s visibly terrified. He doesn’t feel great about telling them about Walt, but he’s just fearing for his life at this point, and Walt did blackmail him. Once they’re at the cooking site and Emilio realizes Walt was at the DEA raid, he panics and tries to bolt, yelling at Walt to run too. Unfortunately, then he… immediately trips and falls on a rock and is simply out cold for all of the climax of the episode. What a waste! (I understand why, obviously; we need to see Walt get the focus here, and they had to get Jesse out of the way somehow. One more tick to the buffoonishness meter, I guess.) But good thing there’s lots of Jesse to come to make up for it!

The climax

Emilio suggests killing both of them straight away, but Krazy-8 stops to say Walt’s an artist and it’ll be a damn shame - and with that, as his mind races, Walt gets an idea. He’s a smart guy, and coming up with ingenious ways out of sticky situations is what he does, but this is the first time we see it happen, when we establish what appears to be the premise of the show - this middle-aged chemist uses his chemistry expertise to get ahead by unconventional means in the drug world - and this first time doesn’t disappoint.

So he tells the drug dealers that he’ll teach them to cook meth like him, if they let him and Jesse live. He’s no fool, of course; if he teaches them his recipe, they’ll have no reason to keep them alive anymore. Instead, he just trusts that they think he’s just that much of a fool, and uses teaching them the recipe as an excuse to take them into the RV and start mixing chemicals - creating the previously-foreshadowed phosphine gas (everything serves multiple purposes!). He’s obviously terrified as he slowly goes through the motions, unsure exactly how much Krazy-8 and Emilio understand of the process, whether they’ll recognize what he’s doing. When Emilio touches his gun to his ear, he flinches. But then, he takes a deep breath, pours the red phosphorus onto the skillet, runs out of the RV in the confusion as the contents explode, and then desperately holds the door closed as K8 and Emilio choke on the fumes and shoot holes in the door, until they stop. He’s scared out of his wits - but he’s survived. And he’s killed two people.

Also, the grass outside is on fire after Emilio dropped his cigarette in it. Walt’s day is not going great.

For all of Walt’s condescension towards Jesse, and the fact Jesse technically just ratted him out to a couple of murderous criminals, it never crosses his mind to leave Jesse behind here - he runs to untie and fetch him the moment K8 and Emilio stop struggling and he has to duck away to breathe. It’s basic human decency but also a certain sense of responsibility for him - a sort of reawakened teacher-student relationship plus the fact he was, after all, the one who roped Jesse into this. He puts gas masks on them both, places Jesse in the passenger seat, and frantically drives the RV away from the spreading wildfire. We’re back at the opening of the episode. What a ride it has been!

From a black screen, we zoom out of the muzzle of the gun that he’s holding up towards the oncoming road. For a few seconds, he stands there, like we saw him in the opening, determined to make his last stand.

And then, under the still-distant noise of the sirens, as that brief adrenaline spike wears off… his hand starts to shake. His expression changes, his lip trembles. He’s not that guy, not yet - and now that we’ve seen what led up to this, that seems pretty inevitable.

I think my single favorite scene in the pilot episode is this bit right here. Walt lowers his gun, closes his eyes, starting to cry again. He can’t do this. Who am I kidding? What have I done? A flicker of expressions passes across his features as he listens to the sirens - what’s he going to do now? Get arrested for two murders? Go to jail? See Skyler and Walt Jr.’s faces, expecting him to explain this to them? How could he ever begin to explain that he’s a murderer? - and his face tightens with something angry and self-loathing, a new spike of emotion, the realization that this is it, it’s over, he should just end it. And abruptly, he jams the gun under his chin and pulls the trigger - with a choked gasp as the gun doesn’t fire. He’s failed even at this. He’s the world’s most pathetic criminal.

(It’s because the safety was on.)

He realizes this, and disables it, and immediately accidentally discharges it. But he doesn’t try again. He sort of limply starts to raise the gun again, but he can’t. Walter Hartwell White, “not an admission of guilt”, stands there, half-crying, with his arms spread in defeat, waiting for the cops to take him.

Except it isn’t the cops. It’s the fire department, about that wildfire. And Walt awkwardly hides the gun behind his back, mouth hanging open, as they drive right past him. Of course they don’t know about him. Nobody knows what just happened. Someone just spotted the smoke from the fire. Why would they give this RV and the pantsless guy standing next to it a second thought? They’re not after him at all. He’s gotten away with it.

And that’s when Jesse regains consciousness, stumbles out of the RV, and asks him what happened and what he did to Krazy-8 and Emilio. Walt, still in a numb shock, faintly explains the gas, then throws up on the ground. As Jesse stands there silently, trying to process the fact his high school chemistry teacher just murdered two people he knew and he’s actually kind of relieved about it, Walt recovers his composure and awkwardly goes, “We gotta clean this up” - probably dealing better than anyone should.

When Walt arrives at home, he’s lightheaded with this new thrill of power and criminality and getting away with something like this. With a round in the dryer, Krazy-8’s money is his, easily covering what he lost on the 'RV’. He’s done it. And it all comes out in a raw burst of sudden sexual energy as Skyler’s telling him that the worst thing he can do is shut her out. She’s incredibly right, but for now, keeping this from her is probably an extra thrill, too, an exciting secret to keep.

Walt is a criminal now - and he’s still dying of cancer, but he feels more alive than he has in a long, long time.

Next episode (S01E02: "Cat's in the Bag...") »

Page last modified April 1 2025 at 00:33 UTC

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